


Not So Silent Night

by KitsJay



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Humor, animatronic Santa Clause, kinkmeme fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-03 00:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1063510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KitsJay/pseuds/KitsJay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is actually one of those Chrismas nutcases who likes to bury their house in so much lights that it can be seen from space. He tries to get Sherlock into the Christmas spirit. This might be harder than he thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Decorations and War Declarations

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the wonderful errantcomment and musical_lottie on LJ for beta'ing and Britpicking respectively. Thank you both so much!

John Watson took a step back, admiring his handiwork. The vast majority of his flatmate’s experiments—and a few that he was sure served no legitimate scientific purpose and were there solely to test the limits of his patience—had been carefully thrown away or swept aside. The books had been neatly put on the shelves, organised by the arcane rules Sherlock insisted on and the detritus littering the main room completely cleared away. The Union Flag pillow, as well as its cousins on the sofa, had been joined by cheerful crocheted versions that boasted poinsettias and snow scenes; there was a green and red afghan tossed over the back of the couch; even the stag’s head mounted on the wall had a string of bells draped around its antlers and a bright red felt circle pasted where its nose should have been.

The _coup de grace_ was the tree which took up an entire corner of the room, decorated with red and gold ornaments, spirals of tinsel, fairy lights winking merrily from between the branches, and a star which lit up on top. John was one of those people who always had their Christmas shopping done well before August and red-and-green tartan wrapped presents lay under the tree, waiting to be distributed and opened come December 25. He nodded with satisfaction. It was perfect. A bit drab, maybe, but he had to buy everything new this afternoon while Sherlock was out.

There was a rap on the door and he opened it to see Mrs. Hudson’s smiling face.

“Yoo-hoo, love,” she said, pushing her way in. Even she was infected by Christmas spirit, wearing a loud scarlet dress and a green bow in her hair. She held a gorgeous china serving plate in her hands, piled high with biscuits cut into trees and reindeer and other festive shapes. “I’ve just brought these by.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hudson,” John said graciously, accepting the plate and putting it on the newly cleaned counter. “What do you think?”

Mrs. Hudson clapped her hands like a little girl. “Oh, doesn’t it look lovely! I used to trim the outside of this place with lights, you know, but… well, my hip.”

“I’ll do it,” John volunteered immediately.

“Will you? That would be wonderful, and such a help.”

“No problem at all,” John assured her, following her out into the hallway as she chattered about how she used to put them up and how festive they looked every year. She showed him where the ladder was kept and the boxes of lights.

“Are you sure this isn’t any trouble?” she asked, craning her neck to follow John’s steps up the ladder.

“Definitely not.”

She smiled. “I’ll just make us a mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows for when you're done."

John whistled as he strung up the lights, occasionally a surprisingly tuneful voice bursting out of him to sing snippets such as, “But the very next day, you gave it away”, which had been Harry’s favourite song when they were younger. He remembered chasing her through the house, begging her to play something else, until she had reached her room, shutting the door in his face and blaring the song as loudly as possible just to annoy him.

He was humming happily when Sherlock walked past, seemingly not noticing John standing on a ladder above his head, disappearing into the building. Approximately fifty-five point nine seconds later, the door banged open and Sherlock reappeared, wild-eyed.

“What has happened to our flat?”

“It’s been cleaned,” John said placidly, draping more lights on the eaves.

Sherlock turned, arms hanging by his sides and staring in shock at the door as if it had personally offended him in some meaningful way, then whirled around again, craning his neck to glare at John more directly. He suddenly disappeared again, thumping up the stairs, then reappeared breathless from climbing the same flight four times in two minutes. He stared at John accusingly. “That is not clean.”

“How would you know?” John shot back. “I doubt you’ve ever had any personal experience with it.”

“Of course I have,” Sherlock said indignantly, drawing himself up. “We had maids.”

“It’s festive.”

“It’s horrid,” Sherlock objected. He ran inside a third time, and briefly John wished his patients showed the same devotion to physical exertion that Sherlock so clearly did. He didn’t have to wait long before Sherlock materialised by the foot of the ladder again.

“It looks like Harrods vomited in our flat,” he said. “There are lights. Everywhere! And a gigantic monstrosity of artificial foliage is hanging from our door.”

“It’s called a wreath, Sherlock.”

“I don’t care! It’s going.”

John finally took his eyes off the lights he was stringing and locked gazes with Sherlock, saying fiercely, “Oh, no. I put up with your experiments, and heads in the freezer, and eyeballs in the microwave, and whatever that … _thing_ was in the bathtub last week, but for the next two weeks, you will leave the decorations alone. Are we clear?”

Sherlock took a step back, looking almost alarmed. He opened his mouth a few times, took note of John’s seriousness, then closed it with a huff and disappeared back into the flat. John took it as a sign of surrender.

He really should have known better.

 

The next day, John rolled out of bed and wandered into the kitchen to get a cup of tea, pouring water into the kettle and setting it to boil. He yawned, still half-asleep, when he suddenly noticed something was different. He looked around. The pillows remained on the sofa, his mother’s afghan was still there, but… the tree. The tree’s admittedly gaudy ornaments had been replaced with tiny pipettes and silver forceps scattered haphazardly amongst the branches. With horror, his eyes slowly raised until he reached the top, where the cheerful star had been replaced with Sherlock’s pet skull.

“Sherlock!” he bellowed without taking his eyes off of the grinning skull.

Sherlock sauntered casually into the kitchen, wrapped in his blue dressing gown. “Yes?”

“What have you done to the tree?”

“It’s _festive_ ,” Sherlock said blandly, though his eyes sparkled.

“Where are the ornaments?” John demanded. “What did you do with them?”

“Is there tea?”

Sherlock snooped around the kitchen, peering over John’s shoulder for the kettle. He reached for a cupboard but John blocked his way, hands on his hips.

“What did you do with them?” he gritted out.

“I simply replaced them with something more interesting,” Sherlock said sulkily. “It’s more fitting for our flat, anyway.”

Though John searched the place high and low, he despaired of ever finding the fragile orbs; he had a sinking feeling that Sherlock had “accidentally” smashed them all before secreting the remnants away. While Sherlock sat on the sofa, his eyes doing their best to destroy the tree through the force of his gaze alone, John finally gave up and padded into the living room in his socks to at least take down the macabre topper gracing his beautiful tree.

“Ow!” he cried suddenly, leaning one hand against the wall and hopping undignified on one foot. He pulled off his sock and found a golden shard of what used to be a merry little decoration imbedded in the thick wool. He pulled it out and held it up for Sherlock to see, who widened his eyes in an innocent expression that didn’t fool either of them.

 _Right, then,_ John thought decisively as he dug out the remains of ornament from his sock.

The war for Christmas had begun.


	2. Special Tinsel and Tactics

Over the next week, a passive-aggressive war for cheerfulness and gaiety had commenced, both sides staking their claims and defending them with rabid territoriality. John would come home from work to find all the reindeer-shaped biscuits had the crosshairs of a rifle painted on their flanks in food dye—or at least, he sincerely _hoped_ it was food dye—and the gingerbread men had been unceremoniously decapitated by vicious bites from the enemy’s teeth. Though John was at a disadvantage, having a steady job which claimed his time and attention, he recruited Mrs Hudson to the cause, who was only too eager to help.

Sherlock would leave the flat on a case, only to come home to find the lights had multiplied, procreating madly around the room in retaliation. A hideous swag rested on the mantelpiece, and guerrillas from the opposing camp had hung tinsel around his room and replaced his comfortable duvet cover with one featuring a heavily commercialised Father Christmas. His pillowcases now greeted him with, “Ho ho ho!” as he walked in.

The days when they were both in proved a battle of wills more than strategy. John would hum Christmas songs under his breath. Sherlock would pull out his violin and raise the bow threateningly. John would begin singing. Sherlock would create hideous screeching noises that would make alley cats wince as he viciously sawed the bow across the strings. John’s voice would raise to overcome the noise, belting out carols with the robust ardour of an opera singer. Even Mrs Hudson had surrendered under the din that regularly emanated from the thin walls of their flat.

Sherlock scored a minor victory on Wednesday. He had taken to loudly deducing the contents of all the presents John bought, some of them within earshot of the recipients. The final straw had come when John had arrived home from work to find Sherlock sitting cross-legged under the tree, holding a soggy package in his hands. The tag was to Sarah and John didn’t need to be a consulting detective to realize that the crystal snow-globe he had bought her hadn’t withstood Sherlock’s vigorous shaking. The rest of the presents had disappeared into the airing cupboard, along with an assortment of gifts for Sherlock, all increasingly more obscure in the hopes that he wouldn’t be able to guess the objects inside before opening them.

One particularly cold day found them both sitting in the living room, glaring balefully at each other from above their laptops. John was typing furiously, bombarding Sherlock’s website forum with singing animations of elves, “Season’s Greetings!” written brightly in alternating red and green fonts, and cutting and pasting inspirational festive sayings from greeting cards. Sherlock had hacked into John’s blog, replacing every one of his entries with “Bah humbug” and a discourse on how A Christmas Carol was clearly the product of a deranged mind and an allegory for the mental illness which pervaded people in December that the naïve termed “Christmas spirit”. There was a particularly savage bit which unfavourably compared the use of “spirits” as ghosts to alcoholic spirits in a literary analysis that would make any self-respecting Dickens scholar pale.

“Er, hello?”

DI Lestrade poked his head into the flat and stared in shock. Every available space was covered in Christmas paraphernalia. An animatronic St. Nicholas waved and bent slightly at the waist to the left of the door, nearly giving him a heart attack as it boomed, “Merrrrry Christmas” in a slurred, soulless voice. The scientific instruments and accoutrements still hung from the boughs of the tree, the gruesome skull having sensibly disappeared somewhere unknown to man or Sherlock. Every type of Christmas-based sweet was spread out in a buffet in the kitchen, with even John tiring of the sugar after eating nothing else for the past week.

“Hello, Greg,” John said without taking his eyes off of Sherlock.

“What happened in here?” Lestrade said, picking his way gingerly over the debris littering the floor.

“John has been attacked by a sudden bout of mental illness,” Sherlock said by way of explanation.

“Actually, I was merely trying to explain the meaning of Christmas to Sherlock,” John growled.

“Bloody hell. You do that with fibre-optics and terrifying animatronics, do you?” Lestrade said, shaking his head. “Whatever happened to peace on earth and goodwill to man? Look at you, you’ve turned this into a ruddy war, all commercialisation and petty vindictiveness.”

They both stared at him until he shifted uncomfortably.

“What?” he asked nervously.

“I’m sorry, was that supposed to suddenly make me realise my mistakes and send me into thralls of teary sentimentalism?” Sherlock asked dryly.

“I’m atheist, myself,” John shrugged.

Lestrade sighed. “I’m leaving now. Just came by to drop these off.”

He produced a series of packages from his messenger bag, each wrapped in more tape than paper. John accepted them, glaring at Sherlock before disappearing to squirrel them away wherever he was hiding them from his flatmate’s irrepressible curiosity. Lestrade stared at them both for a second before shaking his head and leaving. He flinched when the statue began moving again as he walked past. Bloody hell.

“I don’t know why you bothered hiding them,” Sherlock announced, still tapping away on his laptop. John looked up with alarm, quickly logging on to see what new changes had been made to his blog. “It’s obvious that Lestrade bought me a new scarf and you a—“

“Don’t tell me!” John yelled. “Don’t even think it!”

Sherlock leaned forward, smiling triumphantly. “New jumper, he bought you a new jumper, John.”

John felt his face flush a dull red, anger boiling inside him. This was absolutely the last straw. He grabbed his laptop and retreated to his room to contemplate his next move.

Clearly, a new plan of attack was called for.

John stared at his mobile, knowing that what he was about to do would be nigh on unforgivable in Sherlock’s eyes. It would be crossing the line from skirmishes to a full battle, calling in the artillery when the enemy battalion was fighting with bows and arrows.

It was time to call in Mycroft.


	3. Pageants and Pyrrhic Victories

The plan was set into motion on December 24 at 1800 hours. Sherlock had been banished from the flat, sent on a mission to find a shop open to buy something other than sweets to eat. Though the man had complained, John had wrapped his scarf around him, shoved his arm into one sleeve, and unceremoniously pushed him out the door before he could do so much as protest indignantly. He hunched his shoulders from the cold and bitterness of defeat, making his way through the streets and sneering at anyone who dared to send a friendly smile his way.

Not long before he reached Tesco’s, a black car pulled up to the curb and waited for him. He stopped short, debating whether the warmth of the interior was worth talking to his brother. Just as he had decided that nothing was really worth talking to Mycroft, the door had opened and his brother’s assistant poked her head outside.

“He’s not here,” she told him. “Is it really worth walking in this weather when you could ride in the car?”

The reasonableness of that statement convinced Sherlock and he ducked inside, basking in the warmed air circulating the roomy backseat. The assistant, Anthea she was calling herself these days, smiled at him briefly before tapping furiously at her phone. Though he would never go so far as to say that he pouted, the slouch of his posture certainly indicated he had a good sulk going on. After a moment, he straightened suddenly, peering in vain out the windows.

“Where are we going? We should have turned left back there.”

“We’re not going to the shop. Or Baker Street,” Anthea said without looking up.

“I noticed,” Sherlock bit out. “I asked where we _were_ going.”

“Your brother requested I drop you off at St. Bernadette’s.”

An alarm bell, most emphatically _not_ silver, began clanging in Sherlock’s mind. “No.”

“Yes,” she said, almost apologetically.

Sherlock made a frantic attempt to open the door, telling himself that it was preferable to fling himself into traffic rather than suffer through the hellish fate his brother and that traitor of a flatmate of his had decided to consign him to. The doors were locked, foiling his attempt and keeping him a prisoner in the luxurious interior. Anthea shot him a sympathetic, and patently false, smile.

As soon as the car had stopped and the doors opened, Sherlock hurled himself outside intent on making an escape, but a hand grabbed him by the upper arm as soon as he left the car, hauling him unwillingly into the small Catholic school.

“Come along, then,” John said cheerfully, towing him inside to a mass of people finding their seats. The stage was lit up with a traditionally horrible fake set, blankets supposedly simulating snow decorating the panels and awkwardly cut-out trees set up like some kind of demented two-dimensional forest. “You’re going to sit down and enjoy this.”

“I assure you, I won’t,” Sherlock said feelingly. “You should just let me go home now. I might even forgive you.”

“I don’t care,” John said. “Now sit and watch the show.”

The next hour was plagued by Sherlock’s loud commentary on the children’s acting abilities, the shoddy sets, and intermittent suggestions that whoever had staged this monstrosity be blindfolded, put against a wall, and shot. John, for his part, sank slowly lower into his seat with each passing minute, trying in vain to hide his face behind his hand and wondering why he had ever thought this would be a good idea. He didn’t know quite what he was expecting to happen; perhaps a rousing moment when Sherlock would fall silent, watching the ruddy-cheeked children mangle their lines with smiles of blissful ignorance and holiday cheer, and John would look over to see a single tear falling down the curve of Sherlock’s face as he realised the true meaning of Christmas. Clearly too many sappy, maudlin Christmas specials on the telly growing up. This was more _Watership Down_ than _It’s a Wonderful Life._

They eventually had to leave early; their fellow audiences’ irritated mutterings growing in strength until it was either make a hasty retreat or face a _coup d’état_ from the mothers who resented their darlings’ performance being eviscerated by the equivalent of an extremely cranky, petty theatre critic.

Safely outside, John hailed a cab, getting inside and determinedly looking out the window. If he saw Sherlock’s smug face now, he was sure that he would punch the man squarely in the jaw.


	4. Arbitration and Angelic Intervention

John and Sherlock returned to their flat in fuming silence, neither of them even looking at each other from across the small backseat of the cab. John followed Sherlock up the steps, nearly running into him when Sherlock suddenly stopped short after opening the door.

“What is it?” he asked peevishly.

Sherlock stepped aside, allowing John a look. The vast majority of tacky kitsch had been carted off, only the barest bones of the decoration riots still hanging around the flat. It looked almost tasteful. Sitting on the sofa were Molly, Sarah, and Sally Donovan. Mrs Hudson sat chatting to the three younger women, while Lestrade took the place of honour in the armchair.

“Oh, finally,” Lestrade said, standing. “We’ve been waiting for you to get home for ages.”

“How did you get in?” Sherlock demanded. “Mrs Hudson?”

“I let them in, dear,” Mrs Hudson said placidly.

“Another drugs bust? On Christmas Eve? How very tactful of you.”

“Not a drugs bust, an intervention.”

“A Christmas intervention,” Sarah chimed in. She looked at John with a mixture of disappointment and bewilderment. “What on earth were you thinking?”

John shrugged sheepishly. It wasn’t his fault that Sherlock brought out the worst in him. It was like living with Harry all over again, an endless competition of stubborn, childish wills.

“Aha! Finally, voices of reason,” Sherlock said smugly.

Lestrade held up his hand. “Oh, no, we’re here for you, too. We’re all quite tired of this little feud you two have going on. You,” he pointed to John, “are not allowed to order anything else online or visit any more shops. I don’t even want to know how much you spent buying all of this rubbish. And you,” he turned his attention to Sherlock, “are going to grit your teeth and pretend to like it for one night. It won’t kill you, and frankly, we might, if you keep this Scrooge act up. Are we quite clear?”

There was tense moment of silence.

“Yes,” John said finally.

Lestrade glared at Sherlock until the man heaved a put-upon sigh. “Fine.”

“Good. Now help yourself to some mulled wine, have some biscuits, and act merry, dammit.”

John felt his lips twitching and looked over to see Sherlock having the same problem. Without warning, they both burst into giggles, leaning against each other helplessly as the fit took them. Even Lestrade’s serious face broke and he grinned at them, exposing his snaggle-tooth.

The tension caused by the impromptu intervention dissipated under the heady weight of companionship and camaraderie, eased heavily by Mrs Hudson’s “special” Christmas punch, which had been further helped along by a flask Sally had smuggled in.

Halfway through the celebrations, John disappeared into his room, brandishing one last present wrapped in his hands. He offered it silently to Sherlock, who unwrapped the paper delicately, pulling out a box with his prized skull resting inside.

“If you would do the honours,” John said, nodding to the tree.

With quiet dignity, Sherlock stretched his arms and balanced the skull carefully on the uppermost spire of the tree. The group of people stood silently, glasses held loosely in their hands, and silently admired the twinkling lights, the pipettes lit from behind, the warm glow reflecting softly off the forceps. Even the human skull looked somehow strangely appropriate, mounted on top of the tree like a particularly gruesome angel.

“I suppose this is where one of us says something horribly saccharine, like, ‘Merry Christmas to all of us, each and every one’,” Sherlock broke the silence.

John nudged him with his elbow, not even bothering to take his eyes off the centrepiece of the room. “Don’t ruin the moment.”

Sherlock let out a low baritone laugh and slowly everyone resumed chatting quietly amongst themselves, carols crooning faintly from the radio in the background. For a brief, shining moment in that little flat of 221 B Baker Street, there was a moment of peace on earth and goodwill to one’s fellow man.

Until next year, that is.


End file.
